


The Bright and Hollow Sky

by thermodynamic (euphoriaspill)



Series: Chaos Theory [11]
Category: The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Daddy Issues, Drug Addiction, Drunk Sex, Dubious Morality, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Hand Jobs, Hippies, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Second Person, Period-Typical Homophobia, Sexual Content, Underage Drinking, Vietnam War, all in one chapter!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:01:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25236622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euphoriaspill/pseuds/thermodynamic
Summary: Ponyboy spends the second anniversary of Bob’s death at a gay bar.
Relationships: Randy Adderson/Bob Sheldon, Randy Adderson/Ponyboy Curtis
Series: Chaos Theory [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/890436
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	The Bright and Hollow Sky

**Author's Note:**

> if this is what i get cancelled for........ what a way to go

You're knocking back your second drink when you see him across the smoky bar, on a day that makes you forget your disgust for alcohol, your father's old weakness. You always had a keen eye for beauty— it's partly how you've managed to live in denial— and Randy's not the most handsome man you've ever met but maybe the _prettiest_ , in the way people used to sneer at you and Soda for being. Take in the patrician slope of his nose, lightly dusted with freckles, the hazel of his eyes like falling leaves at the end of summer. You're not sure whether you want to kiss him or punch him, maybe one right after the other.

He tries on angry and disapproving like Halloween masks before he finally settles on concerned, and worst of all, you can tell that it's genuine. Unlike Bob, Randy never quite mastered the art of the charm offensive, can only move through the world as guilelessly as you do. "Thought I told you not to come here by yourself."

"You told me not to start hangin' around the abandoned gas station on Sutton," you say, the whiskey making you nastier than he deserves. You're in a dangerous mood. You've felt more and more like that since the end of the summer, since everything with Cliff imploded, since Soda came back from Nam. Like you're a Curtis too, and your father's temper can still make a home inside of you. "Last I checked, you weren't my dad, neither."

"Anyone ever tell you you're a real brat." He says it kind of dirty— you're not sure if he meant it that way. He's got some cocktail in hand, one Steve or Two-Bit would mock him viciously for; you got a whiskey because Darry always orders straight whiskey, and are trying to ignore that it tastes like shit and is burning its way down your esophagus.

"Are we on speaking terms again?"

"I've been busy," he says as he sits down beside you and downs half his glass in one go. "We're organizing a die-in on the quad next week, I'm collecting signatures."

You're not exactly sure what a 'die-in' is supposed to entail, but you wish you could be there— though you have just about enough dignity to keep from asking for an invitation. Vietnam took your brother and sent his shell back home. You want to throw Molotovs at everyone responsible for that alone. "Don't bullshit me," you say instead of any of that, "you've been avoidin' me. For _months_. Is this still about—"

Though you know what this is still about. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out, the point where your friendship withered like a dead grape on a vine.

"I'm too old for you." He shakes the ice around in his glass as he says it, an excuse committed to memory. "You're all mixed up, you're not thinkin' straight— which is why you oughta go home."

" _We went to high school together—_ "

"And now I'm a grown man," he says, like in the span of a couple years he's picked up a fixed-rate mortgage and a car payment. "I'm in college. You live at home with your brother— who hates me, by the way— and have a curfew. We might as well be on separate planets."

That's when you drop the dumbest line you've ever said, since you insisted to Johnny that you'd been fourteen for a month. "I'm not some kid— everyone says I'm mature for my age." When you close your eyes, your head spins, the lights from the bar forming orange patterns on the backs of the lids. " _You_ used to say that."

"That's nice, that you're mature for your age," he says carefully. "Your grade school teachers put that on your report cards?"

"Why are you bein' such a _dick_?" He never used to be cruel to you, and it's an unwelcome development, one that you have no way of coping with except through confused anger. "Yeah, so maybe I kissed you— you led me on first."

"Excuse me?" The way he says it is pure Soc, like being sliced into with an icicle; he even arches his eyebrow. "I did what now?"

"Don't pretend you didn't," you insist with more bravado than real truth. "You took me everywhere with you, introduced me to all your hippie friends, you brought me _here_ , for Chrissakes— what was I supposed to assume?"

"Because I was nice to you? You know what, probably not that I wanted to fuck you." You would believe him more if he wasn't staring at your mouth; your cheeks and neck and ears all glow hot, and not from your drink, not from the warmth of the closely-packed bodies at the bar either. He smiles at you, half-cocked and mean. "You can't even hear the word _said out loud_ , and you think—"

"Can y'all take this outside already?" someone says, real pointedly. "If I wanted to listen to two queens arguing, I'd get involved in community theater."

"Fuck off," Randy says without even turning his head all the way.

"Haven't seen you around here much anymore, girl," Richard says, leaning over Randy's barstool. He's tall and handsome— the high angle of his cheekbones and the dark sheen of his hair makes you wonder if he might be Native, to some degree, more than you are— and the smirk on his face, as he takes a hit from a strange-looking pipe, unsettles you more than how he's Randy's ex... something. "If you're still hung up on him, word to the wise, those commitment issues ain't goin' nowhere fast."

"Don't flatter yourself. There was a lot puttin' me off before them commitment issues ever came into play." You've never heard him say 'them' like that before— barely heard him drop an 'ain't' into casual conversation. He drains his glass.

Richard flips him off, real easy. "Hey, you ain't interested, I'll take him," he says just as easy, then tilts the pipe at you. "You want some?"

You're five seconds and a little too much alcohol away from making a decision you're going to regret, which is when Randy pulls you up by the armpit. "No," he says bitingly, "I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to smoke some meth with you." You're too startled to protest until he's tugged you out the door and into the windy parking lot, your head throbbing slightly and your limbs leaden, until somehow he's bundled you into the passenger seat of his truck. "Come on, I'll drive you home, should've the second I saw you there."

"What was that all about?" You can't believe he just dragged you out of there, like a kitten by the scruff of its neck. They're probably still laughing at you, Richard loudest of all. "Who the hell do you think you are now?"

"Do you want him to fuck you?" He takes his hands off the steering wheel to gesture, too, jabs his index finger into the hole he made with his thumb. Your face heats up again, he doesn't need to— literally— draw you a picture. "Then go back inside and take a hit. He's right, you really _will_ go all night."

" _Quit actin' like you're my brother._ " You have a million of those already and never asked for them to run your life, either, not to mention how your sister's nose is constantly in your business. "You don't even think of me that way—"

"You're right," he says flatly. "You ain't my brother. You ain't anything like a brother to me."

"Then why are you pretendin' as much?"

"Well, look at you, Pony Curtis," he starts, but it's more wistful than mocking. "I guess you're the closest thing I've ever had to a moral compass."

"You know what I'm getting a little tired of." You kick the dash, and you put a lot into that kick; he gives you a look filthy enough to kill. You're tempted to unbuckle your seatbelt and jump out onto the road, you're already so tired of him, but you have about enough sense left to realize you'd crack your skull open. "People tellin' me what I'm supposed to want. For _my own good_."

You've seen more bodies than you care to count, were on the run for murder just after your fourteenth birthday. You feel so old your bones should have long since crumbled to dust. And all day Darry still tells you that you want to go to college, that you want to be some kind of accountant or middle-manager, that you like girls, that you're going through a phase, that you've been looking for attention ever since Soda tried to trade the TV for smack— and that you better knock it off before he really loses his patience with this. It's enough to make you want to leave home for good, barely sixteen or not.

"Freud would have a field day with you," he says. He's a psychology minor. "Your father ignored you, your brother always criticizes you. Then you wonder why I told you to stay away from older guys, when you've got 'fuck me, Daddy' written all over your face."

You're struck by the urge to smack him, hard enough to snap his neck backwards. He must notice the way your muscles tense up, because he doesn't even try to defend himself. "You want to lay me out?" he asks as a taunt, his vowels long and syrupy. "Go ahead. Can't say you don't deserve to."

You scoff loudly, now that he's literally asking for it, you can't even bring yourself to clench a fist. "I'm not gonna play games with you, I do enough of that with Soda." You're exhausted— he exhausts you— the edges of your vision blur and pixilate. You spent about a million hours last summer cruising around in this car, passing a joint back and forth, talking about the escalating situation in Indochina or the latest gossip in the cluster of hippie groups you visited or how badly Jack Kerouac's been misunderstood by the pseudo-intellectual set. God you miss it. "Not tonight. I can't believe you want to do this _tonight_."

"You think you're the only one who's ever lost somebody?" He slams on the brakes so hard, if you weren't wearing a seatbelt, you would've flown through the windshield. Pulls over. "My best friend since second grade _died_ , and you know what, I can't even _miss_ him, because he had it coming. And I can't even knock a few back and forget about it, either, 'cause I guess I have to look after you now."

His eyes are wet. The two of you were always honest with each other, even back when you first met and started making an uneasy truce; you'd never been closer to anyone, since Johnny died. You miss your _friend_ Randy like hell, the guy who you told things you didn't even dare confide in—

"You deserve better." He blinks too fast. "What do you want to get out of me, the barrel of a gun? See if I'll help you blow your brains out?"

"Maybe I just _like_ you. Is that completely unbelievable?"

"I let Bob try to drown you in a fountain." He lets out a little gasp like he's forgotten how to breathe. "You think I was real tormented about it? I wasn't. I would've done anything he told me to do, even if he'd killed you."

You close your eyes and swallow filthy, leaf-filled water, your lungs burning, the world going quiet and still before you woke up to Bob's dark blood all over the pavement— you couldn't shower without wanting to throw up for six months afterwards. Think about your parents hollering at each other, your mother's hand cracking across your father's face as she threw him out of the house. Your sister smoking out her bedroom window, wearing a bra and cut-off shorts, a weal swelling under her eye where Dallas had smacked her— _couples fight, Pone._ Love and violence all mixed up, impossible to separate out.

"I told you." Your throat is almost too tight to speak through. "I'm tired of bein' told what I'm supposed to want. And you ain't half as bad as you'd like to think you are."

You gasp, the sound knocked out of your lungs, as he kisses you; it's more like your jaws collide in a clatter of teeth and bone, hard enough to bruise, hard enough to break. He grasps the wispy hair at the back of your neck, tilts your head up for your mouth to meet his, and you feel like you're being electrocuted— there's no other word for it, maybe you'll never have another pretty word again, your entire world reduced down to a white-hot current flowing through you. When he pulls away a little, maybe an inch from your face, you whine from the sudden lack of it. "Is _this_ what you want?" he demands with his hands digging into your shoulderblades, his bottom lip all swollen from the way your teeth sunk into it. "Because you're wrong about me, I can't keep talkin' you down forever. I guess I am that bad."

Jesus _fucking_ Christ. You spent twenty minutes trying to, with increasing desperation, get it up with Cathy before leaving for a much longer shower, and here you're already about to come in your pants. His eyes are wild, his pupils blown like he's just snorted coke. You want this more than you can remember wanting anything, when you kiss him back.

You tumble over the console, into the backseat.

* * *

"Does this. Count?"

You're... sticky, you register from your vantage point in the backseat, still lying on your side, propped up on an elbow. Came all over yourself, with him coaxing you in your ear, more gentle than you expected he'd be— _yeah, baby, that's it, just like that—_ Nobody's ever called you _baby_ before, not in the romantic sense. What base is this supposed to be again? Are there even still bases without a broad involved?

He zips his jeans back up and rests his head against the doorframe, his hair all messed up in the front where you fisted it. You're not sure if you were any good— he kept having to guide your hand as you fumbled, though you really should've been familiar with the motion— but he finished too, with a sharp intake of breath like he'd been punched, so you must've done something right. "Mother _fucker_."

"That doesn't really answer my question." You wonder if he has any towels in his car, or if you should just wipe yourself off on your shirt.

He looks at you through his lashes, his face illuminated and shadowed by the neon lights from the motel across the street— _No Vacancy_. "You ever done anything before? With anyone?"

For the millionth time that night, you blush. "No."

His head moves back again, and he closes his eyes. "Shit. In my goddamn _backseat_." This is more than you've heard him cuss in the past two years. Then he adds, in a more pleading voice, "did you like it?"

Your blush deepens. "Yeah." Then, before you lose your nerve— "a lot."

Maybe more than you've ever liked anything in your life, certainly more than your chaste kisses with Cathy, hands never straying below her collarbone. You get it now, why all the guys you know are so obsessed with sex, something you could never learn out of any book. And your heart won't stop hammering against the wall of your chest, because you should've known when you snuck into your mama's room to try on pantyhose, watched _A Streetcar Named Desire_ five times to see Marlon Brando shirtless, let Randy's friends, through drunk peals of laughter, put eyeliner on you at the bar—

You're a queer. A bona fide homosexual. Now that you've done it, touched another guy's dick in what definitely wasn't a locker room, you've crossed that Rubicon— no going back, no denying it.

"You'd like it better in a bed." Now it's his turn to blush, once the implications of that hit him. "Get in the front," he says quietly. "I'll drive you home."

You almost want to cry as you crawl back into the passenger seat, overstimulated and worn out and desperately sad, but you know that if you do, he'll blame himself for it. You're too old to be such a bawl-baby anymore. Instead you do something even worse, and ask, "did you do that with Bob?"

If he wanted to deny it, the moment passes before he can, there's too long a pause. "Yeah. Stuff like that."

 _Commitment issues_ — Richard's mocking words swirl around your head. The way he talked about him right after his death, even, with thinly-veiled reverence. You can't believe you never put the pieces together yourself.

"Were you..." You gulp so hard it hurts, lurches against the thin, delicate skin of your throat. "You know. In love with him?"

"I was real stupid for him," he says with a short laugh. "I don't know if he felt the same way back... he probably didn't, I'm not sure if he ever would've let himself." He takes his eyes off the road long enough to look at you. "Are things really that bad? With Soda?"

"... Yeah." You try so hard not to think about it, it takes a few seconds to even associate 'Soda' with... _that_. "He came back all changed, the doctor at the VA ain't sure if it's 'cause he got hit on the head or post-traumatic stress, but he's... I don't recognize him at all no more."

"How—"

"He broke Jasmine's wrist," you say tightly. "She wouldn't give him enough money for another hit, so he—" You might cry, actually. Soda used to love Jasmine better than anybody. "Darry kicked him out, but he always lets him back in... he took out a second mortgage on the house to send him to rehab again, but he just bullshits the counselors there until they spring him. Last time he was usin' again in an hour."

"You should've told me," he says, stricken. Genuinely stricken, the way he was back when you first met, when he figured out you didn't have any parents. "You should've— I would've—"

"I know," you say, trace patterns in the condensation on the window. You know he would've been there for you. If you're really being honest with yourself, it was your own pride and embarrassment that pushed you to withdraw from him— maybe an inheritance from your Protestant mama, you have a powerful aversion to airing out your dirty laundry. "It's okay."

"This was a mistake." You can't even argue the point. "Pony, this was a mistake. We were drinking— it can't happen again."

"I get it. I'm in a bad place—"

You kind of do get it, now that you're less horny, angry, and drunk, in that order. This felt good, sure, but you can't shake the sense of something being _off_ from the memory, like missing a staircase step. One day it'll happen again, and it'll be natural and right. You're sure of that.

"I'm in a bad place." Now you want to kick yourself for being so self-absorbed. "I know you probably don't want to hear about him— I mean, I wouldn't, if he tried to kill _me_ —"

"It's okay," you say, and you're surprised to find that you mean it. You don't hate Bob Sheldon— mostly, you just pity him. Your daddy had his fair share of faults, but you can't imagine what it'd be like growing up with one who didn't care if you lived or died. "Just... tell me the truth. Were you thinkin' about—"

You're not the right type, physically, at least. But Richard, he could've been Bob's cousin.

"No." He exhales like it was a breath he'd forgotten he was holding. "Definitely not."

"We should be friends again," you sigh out, no matter what Darry or Jasmine think. It feels better than you expected it to, less like a consolation prize. "I missed bein' friends."

"Me too," he says, "you know how many terrible takes on _The Catcher in the Rye_ I've had to listen to without you?" Even punches you in the arm, and though the levity isn't effortless, you help him out and punch him back. "Gonna take more than bad handjobs to break up this band."

When you laugh, you mean it.


End file.
